The personal blog of Peter Lee a.k.a. "China Hand"... Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel, and an open book to those who read. You are welcome to contact China Matters at the address chinamatters --a-- prlee.org or follow me on twitter @chinahand.

Friday, August 30, 2013

It isn’t essential to my world view for Snowden et. al. to
be supercompetent, supersecure, superleakers…or for them to be stupid,
narcissistic, traitors.

But it seems to be important for some people…

So the British allegation that Miranda was carrying a
written decrypt key on his person at Heathrow, and the British police have been
able to decrypt 75 files has generated a considerable amount of hoo-hah.

My humble opinion:

Greenwald and Miranda could have been guilty of sloppy
tradecraft. Maybe.

But I think it’s equally possible that the British spooks
are loading documents onto Miranda’s seized electronics themselves so they can
recover them and announce the Snowden gang is a bunch of reckless and dangerous
dingbats.

Only way that Greenwald could rebut the allegation would be
to decrypt everything on the drive and say “You see! Those documents weren’t
part of the dump (or already were in a different folder).They’ve been added!”

Don’t see him doing this.

I had the same thought when the Independent published a
document that it said was among the documents Snowden had taken.I noticed they didn’t say “We obtained
Snowden’s digital copy of the document.”It was more like, “We got this document.GCHQ says Snowden’s got it (too).”

That kind of activity helps divert the narrative from “Snowden
reveals massive surveillance” to “Snowden endangers spooks and national
security.”

I don’t think that’s an accident…and I think that it would
be considered worth diddling with Miranda’s electronics to get this kind of
result.

In the context of the PRC charm offensive at ASEAN (leavened by a sharp slap at Philippine's President Aquino), the Beijing Review has published a detailed explanation of "core interests" that also provides some pretty significant looking and novel interpretations of China's South China Sea claims.

In the article, dated August 26, China's declaration of key interests misinterpreted, the anonymous author rehashes the evolution of the "core interest" concept since 2005, including "territorial sovereignty" as a bedrock value that cannot be compromised and must be defended by any and all means including armed force if necessary.

But then...

However, some media, think tanks and
military officers have misinterpreted China's announcement of its core
interests as a regional policy shift and an external show of strength.
Their inaccurate portrayals have undoubtedly influenced Washington's
China policy.

In July 2010, the Japanese and U.S. media quoted an anonymous American expert as saying that China has included the South
China Sea in the country's core national interests, adding that the
United States, Japan and India should join hands to contend against
China on the issue.

However, no internal or public Chinese
document or declaration at the time made claim to the entirety of the
South China Sea—it has merely asserted its sovereignty over certain
islands and islets in South China Sea, and stated that it will engage in
negotiations and dialogues when disputes arise. China is committed to
the Declaration on the Code of Conduct on the South China Sea and
respects and will maintain the freedom of navigation on the sea.

...

The false rumors have spread from the
United States, Japan and some Southeast Asian countries that China has
laid claim to the entirety of the South China Sea and will commit to an
area denial strategy in the region. It is believed that these
inaccuracies aim to escalate maritime disputes between China and its
neighboring countries around the South China Sea, creating tensions that
intend to justify the U.S. "pivot to Asia."

If this position holds, it seems the PRC is shifting away from the anachronistic nine dash line to a more UNCLOS-friendly restatement of its South China Sea claims as stemming from its sovereignty over specific above water features.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Reuters has a good article by Ben Blanchard on China’s
frustrations in the Middle East.

Since it is unable to project power in the Middle East, the
PRC has been forced to stand by as the U.S. makes a royal cockup of the region.

Unfortunately, I feel the article delivered a clanger in its
conclusion—that the PRC relies on U.S. good offices to “guarantee stability”
and keep the oil flowing:

China effectively
relies on a strong U.S. military presence in the region to guarantee stability
and the smooth flow of oil, especially through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran
has threatened in the past to close in the event of war.

One thing the US has not delivered to the Middle East in the
last fifteen years is “stability”.

And I don’t think the PRC’s strategic thinkers necessarily believe
that Middle East instability is a bigger threat to China’s oil supply than the
US presence.

After all, if there’s one thing that everybody in the Middle
East, including mortal enemies Iran and Saudi Arabia, is they all want to
export to China.

As to whether or not the United States is simply and
altruistically interested in making sure that China’s energy purchases make it
safely through the Straits of Hormuz…

…as the stabilizer and oil flow assurer-in-chief, the United
States, the U.S. is distinctly aware of the strategic leverage it holds over
China by maintaining its presence in the Middle East, as I pointed out in a
recent rummage through the historical record:

In 2006, in the
American Prospect, Robert Dreyfuss described the Cheney outlook on the People’s
Republic of China, based on the account of Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff,
Lawrence Wilkerson. Dreyfuss wrote:

Two of the
people most often encountered by Wilkerson were Cheney's Asia hands, Stephen
Yates and Samantha Ravich. Through them, the fulcrum of Cheney's foreign
policy--which linked energy, China, Iraq, Israel, and oil in the Middle
East--can be traced. The nexus of those interrelated issues drives the OVP's
broad outlook.

Many Cheney
staffers were obsessed with what they saw as a looming, long-term threat from
China.

...

For the
Cheneyites, Middle East policy is tied to China, and in their view China's
appetite for oil makes it a strategic competitor in the Persian Gulf region.
Thus, they regard the control of the Gulf as a zero-sum game. They believe that
the invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. military buildup in Central Asia, the
invasion of Iraq, and the expansion of the U.S. military presence in the Gulf
states have combined to check China's role in the region. …

One may
speculate that Mr. Cheney’s determination to keep a threatening thumb over
China’s Middle East oil artery lives on in the Obama administration’s continuing
involvement in the bottomless pit of money, munitions, and misery that is US
Middle East policy, despite the President’s avowed interest in pivoting away
from the Middle East to the peaceful and profitable precincts of Asia.

As the U.S. dependence on Middle East oil has shrunk, thanks
to the twin miracles of fracking and Canadian gunk, Chinese dependence on
Middle East oil has become well-nigh absolute, a state of affairs that is, as
Blanchard points out, imperfectly reflected in the state of affairs in the
Middle East.

This shift in U.S. foreign dependency from Middle East
energy to Pacific trade supposedly underlies the “pivot to Asia” a.k.a. “the
rebalancing”. But the U.S. still seems militarily
stuck in the Middle East for a variety of reasons, and maybe because continued leverage in the matter of key global energy flows is simply too
irresistible to abandon.

The Chinese have tried to pivot into the Middle East—diplomatically. Since PLA power projection is about a decade
away from aspirational, as the Reuters piece points out, the PRC has tried to
midwife a Middle Eastern order based on stability through the principle of non-interference
i.e. Saudi Arabia and Iran are welcome to deploy their resources in their
pursuit of stability (suppression of domestic democratic sentiments) without
Obama-style rabble-rousing in support of democracy, human rights, and freedom
to connect. And as Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia,
depose their authoritarian regimes and send new governments through the
revolving door of populist/factionalist/military governance, China is always
there with a welcoming handshake and offer of aid. And the PRC has been reasonably surefooted in
walking the Palestinian/Israeli tightrope, maintaining good relations with both sides.

If anything, events in Syria tend to confirm the wisdom of
the Chinese approach. So I found
Blanchard’s observation that “The worsening Syria conflict has exposed an
uncomfortable truth behind China's cherished policy of non-interference:
Beijing cannot do much to influence events even if it wanted to,” a little off
the mark.

The PRC has received precious little support from the Obama
administration in its effort to quiet down the ruckus in the Middle East. Perhaps the United States, driven its
irresistible imperative to impose human rights, democratic, and
non-proliferation norms in the region, is unwilling or unable to address China’s
amoral and opportunistic desire for stability.

Or maybe the U.S. security establishment remembers China’s
free-riding on expensive U.S. initiatives in Iraq and Afghanistan, and resents
Chinese footdragging and backfilling on Iran sanctions.

Do Chinese establishment liberals debate whether the PRC
should have thrown a few lives and a few million dollars into the bloody maw of
U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and shown a greater eagerness to
cripple the Iranian economy on America’s behalf on order to ingratiate itself
to Washington?

Maybe. However, a
look at recent history implies that U.S. hostility to the PRC is systemic and
institutionalized, and there is no G2 nirvana in the offing. So any U.S. gratitude to China—and willingness
to consider Chinese energy anxieties when the next opportunity for a bloody
Middle Eastern debacle, such as attacking China’s key energy partner Iran over
its alleged nuclear transgressions, presents itself-- would be conditional,
temporary, and unreliable.

It certainly is not a slamdunk cinch that China considers
that its energy security is best served by a U.S. naval force lurking in the
Straits of Hormuz, or even that the PRC’s interests would be better served by inserting
a substitute PLA presence in the region.

I am sure that China security hawks are arguing that the PRC
should attempt to replicate the U.S. precedent, and try to project PRC military
power into the Gulf, thereby abandoning the principle of non-interference (and,
inadvertently, providing a measure of vindication-by-imitation of a US policy of
intervention that has yielded catastrophic costs but precious few benefits,
which is why, I believe, any perceived Chinese drift from the principle of
non-interference receives excited attention from the Western security press).

I also expect that there are voices within the PRC
establishment who regard the U.S. formula for global relevance (whenever the
dark cloud of instability appears, look for the silver lining of an opportunity
for U.S. intervention) as a luxury that only the United States can afford. And, even if the PRC decides to embark on the
quixotic and expensive quest of Middle East military power (and somehow avoid
tripping over India, which might have a few things to say about Chinese carrier
groups sailing off its doorstep), as long as the US worries about China, the
United States will not surrender its role as Middle East pot-stirrer in chief
to the PRC.

Maybe there are better and more cost-effective ways to hedge
against an interruption of shipments from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, and Iran. Things like spending billions to buy
friendships with those in power, instead of spending hundreds of billions on
force projection (and getting forced into countless bad decisions about how to
use that power, as is happening to the US in Syria).

As the center of gravity of the oil markets shift to China
and Asia—and the attention and interest of the Middle East oil barons follow—perhaps
China’s best hope is that the United States will tire of the Middle Eastern
game, Saudi Arabia and Iran will decide that a prolonged shutdown of the
Straits of Hormuz in a war of annihilation is an option not worth pursuing, and
the region will refocus on its core business of pouring non-renewable energy
down the thirsty throat of the Asian economic miracle.

Monday, August 26, 2013

Did the Syrian rebels trap President Obama into military action by using his own words, specifically his definition of use of chemical weapons as a "red line"?

I, for one, am somewhat skeptical of the idea that the Assad
regime decided to mount a chemical weapon attack against a Damascus suburb just
as a UN chemical weapons investigation team was hunkering down in Damascus.

Assad is no angel, but, like most dictators, his survival
skills—particularly, the skill of keeping his outrages below the level that
provoke Western military action—seem pretty well honed.

As an alternative version of what might have gone down,
imagine some guy, let’s say, Prince B---, tells President Obama:

Yeah, the chemical weapons attack was a false flag operation
by the rebels.Whatcha gonna do about
it, Mr. Red Line?Pin the attack on the
rebels and destroy the Syrian uprising?Do nothing and look like a wuss?Or blame Assad, bury the truth about the attack under a pile of cruise
missiles and propaganda, keep the insurrection going, and promote an image of
American leadership in the Middle East?

For the rebels and their supporters, foreclosing the
possibility of any West-brokered negotiated settlement with Assad might be
worth a few hundred innocent lives.

The carefully prepared—written!—U.S. backgrounder laying the
PR groundwork for some kind of military action against Syria deployed the “too
late” argument, as in “The Syrian government was ‘too late’ in permitting
access to the site of the alleged attack”.

I’m no expert on sarin forensics and the difficulties of
detecting traces after five days, but I do have a pretty good recollection of
the run-up to the Iraq War, when the Bush administration was rather anxious to
bring an end to UN inspection process, primarily, I suspect because it had
discovered an embarrassing lack of WMDs.

Here’s a nice item of “too late” memorabilia from CNN in
September 2002:

Powell says it's too late for Iraq to negotiate

<

WASHINGTON (CNN) --Secretary of
State Colin Powell said Sunday that U.N. weapons inspectors must be allowed
to go "anywhere, anytime" if they returned to Iraq -- rejecting
that country's conditional offer to allow inspections to resume.

"If they have no weapons,
what are they hiding?" Powell said on CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf
Blitzer."

"They find all kinds of
excuses, a thousand excuses -- 'There are spies on this team. We don't want
this. When are sanctions going to be relieved and removed?' The issue is
Iraqi noncompliance, and we should not allow them to move us off that
issue."

At a news conference Saturday,
Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said his nation would allow inspectors
to return only if the United States doesn't bring military action and if U.N.
sanctions are lifted.

"If there is a solution which
maintains Iraq's sovereignty, dignity and legitimate rights and prevents
aggression, we are ready," Aziz said.

President Bush brought his case
against Iraq to the U.N. General Assembly last week, challenging the
international organization to enforce resolutions seeking to disarm the
Saddam Hussein regime.

Aziz denied Iraq was harboring
weapons of mass destruction and accused Bush and British Prime Minister Tony
Blair of exaggerating the threat Iraq poses to the region.

Powell said it was too late for
Iraq to negotiate the terms for the return of international weapons
inspectors.

He said he was working with
members of the U.N. Security Council to try to hammer out a resolution that
lays out Iraq's violations of U.N. resolutions, what the country must do to
meet the U.N. conditions and what the international community will do if it
does not respond.

"The time for Iraq to respond
was years ago," Powell said. "They now have an opportunity to
respond now with this new resolution. But what we cannot allow to have happen
is to get into this haggling and listening to the duplicitous comments that
are constantly coming out of Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz."

...

"Enough is enough," said
Bush, who argued that Saddam has defied the United Nations 16 times since the
Persian Gulf War. "The United Nations will either be able to function as
a peacekeeping body as we head into the 21st century, or it will be
irrelevant, and that's what we are about to find out."

Bush also said if the world body
did not act, he was prepared to take matters into his own hands.

"Make no mistake about
it," Bush said. "If we have to deal with the problem, we'll deal
with it."